


All First Editions

by cyankelpie



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1941, Crowley's Bentley (Good Omens), Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining, Post-Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol, Realization, too many feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 23:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20072269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyankelpie/pseuds/cyankelpie
Summary: The only thing Aziraphale can say for certain is that the books should not have survived. He's going to need to sit down for a while and sort out all the rest. Unfortunately, he isn't very good at processing emotions, especially ones he's been in denial about for who knows how long. It's a messy process.





	All First Editions

“Lift home?”

Aziraphale didn’t quite catch the words at first. He was busy standing there with his hat in one hand and a bag of miraculously unscathed books in the other, dizzy from the aftermath of what had just fallen on him. Not the church, which now lay in charred ruins around him but had left him and Crowley miraculously unscathed. The ringing in his ears from the exploding bombs had been a cinch to clear up as well, and as he had no need to breathe, the smoke hardly bothered him. No, something quite different had just dropped on him, with the weight of a bag of books (all first editions) that shouldn’t have mattered to anyone but Aziraphale.

“Coming, Angel?” Crowley called without turning around.

Aziraphale blinked a few times. The handle of the bag was suddenly slick in his hand, and he had difficulty keeping his grip. Crowley’s words turned over a few times in his head before he understood them. “Be right with you,” he said, picking his way over the rubble after Crowley.

It registered after a few moments that Crowley was walking across the street towards a car. Aziraphale realized a second later that Crowley apparently intended to drive it. “Well?” Crowley glanced back at Aziraphale and gestured proudly at the beetle-black machine. “What d’you think?”

Aziraphale swallowed. He was having much more difficulty than usual putting together a cohesive sentence. “It’s yours?”

“Course it’s mine,” said Crowley, insulted. “What, d’you think I stole it? I haven’t stooped to simple theft in centuries.” He opened the passenger side door and waved Aziraphale inside. “Hop in. I’ll take you for a spin.”

Everything was already spinning far too much for Aziraphale’s liking. The bag of books threatened to slip out of his hand and spill all over the pavement. They shouldn’t have mattered to Crowley. His mind kept snagging on that one thought and couldn’t seem to go any further.

Crowley was waiting for him. Gathering as much of himself as he could manage, Aziraphale climbed into the car. The inside was so much smaller than he was prepared for. Crowley had no sooner shut the door than he had the urge to open it again and jump out. The books were safely out of his hand and on the floor now. They weighed down the tops of his feet, asserting their improbable survival. But Crowley had no reason to save them. They only should have mattered to Aziraphale.

“Right,” said Crowley, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Same old bookshop?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“Here we go, then.” The car purred to life, and then Aziraphale’s stomach, which had been hovering somewhere around his sternum, rocketed straight to his throat. He scrambled for something to hold on to and accidentally opened the door. A gust of wind roared past, and he nearly discorporated from fright before managing to close it again. He was no expert on cars, but he was almost certain they were not supposed to be driven like this. “Crowley—”

“Now _this_ is transportation,” said Crowley, baring his teeth in a toothy grin. The car swerved wildly around corners and cars and terrified pedestrians. “Dunno how we managed so long with just feet and horses. Forget the wheel, this is mankind’s greatest invention.” He cleared his throat. “Guess you’d still need the wheel first, though. Hard to invent a car without ‘em.” Three horns blared at once as Crowley wove between several police cars, whose engines died unexpectedly when they tried to pursue him. “You ever drive?”

“No,” Aziraphale barely managed to get out.

“Ought to try it, then.” Crowley clucked in mock pity. “Oh, but you wouldn’t have any fun, now I think of it. You’d have to follow all the rules, wouldn’t you? Signal before turning, stay on the left, don’t drive on the pavement…”

“That’s how you are supposed to drive! For heaven’s sake, Crowley—” He squeezed his eyes shut as they passed a lamppost so closely that he could hear the wind clawing at the paint. “Sorry, Anthony—”

“Either one’s fine. So, angel, what have you been up to all this time?” Crowley asked, as if they weren’t in danger of smashing themselves or someone else into smithereens any moment. “I see you’ve been gotten yourself mixed-up in affairs of the state. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“I’d certainly say so.” Nearly a century, to be precise. The last time he’d seen Crowley, the demon had asked him for something that terrified him too much to think about. Crowley’s silence afterwards had only worried him more. He hadn’t answered any of the notes Aziraphale had sent his way, and he had feared the worst until recent rumors began to circulate about the mysterious Mr. A. J. Crowley. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Ah, yeah, sorry about that,” said Crowley. “I fell asleep.”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure at first if he had heard correctly. “What?”

“I fell asleep,” Crowley said. “Had a nice, long nap.”

“It’s been nearly eighty years!”

“Yeah. Nice, long nap.”

Aziraphale shut his eyes for a moment. The blazing speed of the car, the pounding in his chest, and the weight of the books sliding around on his shoes were not making it any easier to follow the conversation. “But why?” he asked after a moment. “You don’t even need to sleep.”

“Well, I don’t need to do any of it, do I?” He looked at Aziraphale instead of watching the road. London rushed past in a blur of blackness and streetlamps, and the books shifted on Aziraphale’s feet, and he wanted to scream, _for God’s sake, slow down—_

“You don’t need to eat, either,” said Crowley, turning back to the road. “Doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy it.”

Aziraphale redoubled his grip on the door and struggled to catch his breath. “What is there to enjoy about sleep? You aren’t even conscious during it.”

“Maybe I didn’t feel like being conscious.” The Bentley wheeled around a corner so tightly two of its wheels left the ground. “It can be a real relief, not having to think. Plus, there’s dreaming,” he added cheerfully. “Have you ever had a dream? It’s a wild experience.”

Aziraphale swallowed. “Eighty years, Crowley.”

“More like fifty, actually,” said Crowley. “It was weird, I woke up and there were all these clever new machines rushing through the streets. All these brilliant new inventions. The humans even started another war all by themselves, and what a doozy of a war it was. That got me some points downstairs, I can tell you. Luckily I woke up just in time to report it.”

“Eighty years.” There had been moments since their last meeting that Aziraphale feared he’d seen the demon for the last time, even after he learned that Crowley was still alive and well. They had parted on less than amiable terms, to say the least. As far as Aziraphale could tell, their arrangement had ended. “You could have sent word. Or called.”

Crowley took a moment before answering. “Right. Telephones. Another nifty invention I woke up to.”

Aziraphale looked out the window. During Crowley’s silence, he had assumed, or maybe hoped, that in their respective lines of work their paths would cross again eventually, even if they found themselves on opposite sides. He’d thought at first that was what had happened tonight, that in spreading evil—or inconvenience—Crowley had finally gotten around to thwarting Aziraphale’s good deeds in just the sort of awkward situation that the arrangement was designed to prevent. But then the Nazis were not working with Crowley, and the bombs that should have fallen on the West End were thrown off-course, and the books, _his_ books, that had no value whatsoever to Crowley—

The Bentley slammed to a stop. Aziraphale barely managed to keep his head from cracking against the front windshield. “Are you trying to kill us?” he gasped.

“I’d be doing a pretty poor job of it.” Crowley pulled a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to Aziraphale with a flick of his fingers. “There you go, all right?” he said quietly. “In case I oversleep something important.”

Aziraphale took the card, which read, _Anthony J. Crowley, Demon,_ with an address and telephone number beneath it. His hand shook a little, probably from shock after the near-death experience that was Crowley’s driving. “Do you just carry these around with you?”

“Well, I can rearrange the ink as needed, so they don’t always say ‘demon.’ They come in handy from time to time.” Crowley nodded at the window. “Here we are, by the way. A cab would’ve taken you twice as long. You’re welcome.”

Aziraphale looked out to the darkened front of his bookshop. It was his turn to speak. This was the part where he invited Crowley inside and offered to catch him up on what he’d missed, and maybe asked exactly what it was that had earned him such a widespread yet vague reputation. They’d open a bottle of wine and chat until sunrise, and it would be like nothing had ever happened.

Aziraphale’s thoughts were so knotted up that he scarcely trusted himself to carry on a conversation. There was too much to unravel before he reoriented himself. His heart still raced even after the car had come to a stop. _Won’t you come inside for a moment? It’s been too long. I have a bottle of port that would be just the thing._

Instead, he said, “Well, good night, then,” and tried not to look at Crowley’s face as he climbed out of the car.

The hand that held the books tingled as Aziraphale walked to the door, miracled it open, and shut it behind him. Safe in the back room, he set the bag down and opened it to confirm again that his books were, in fact, whole, even though they had no right to be. He half expected them to crumble in his hands. There was no reason for Crowley to have saved them. He had no use for them at all, and the _why_ of it ran in circles around his brain, _why, why, why…_But there was no reason he could see, unless Crowley—unless Crowley—

But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Crowley was a demon. He wasn’t capable. That was what heaven had taught him, anyway, although according to heaven a demon also wouldn’t worry over the fate of children that the almighty had declared collateral damage, or give a bright young carpenter the opportunity to travel the world. He certainly wouldn’t expend a miracle to save a bagful of books that should not have mattered to him.

Aziraphale sat in the opposite corner of the room and stared at the bag as if it might explode and reduce the bookshop to rubble. It had already done about as much to him. If he was honest with himself, he knew better than to believe everything he’d heard about demons after knowing Crowley for so long. And what other reason could there be for his saving the books? But it was too sudden to be believed. It had come out of nowhere. Crowley? No, he couldn’t see it.

Then all of a sudden he couldn’t stop seeing it. Crowley popping up in the Bastille, with a “you’re lucky I happened to be in the area” and a handful of miracles. Crowley in the Globe Theater, complaining about _Hamlet_ even as he pushed it to unparalleled success. Crowley cringing and tap-dancing his way over consecrated ground to save Aziraphale from a crushing mountain of paperwork. How long had he been there, always right where Aziraphale needed him? How long…

Aziraphale scooted his chair even further into the corner. There was something else, too, something he had stuffed away into a corner on the car ride home and tried very hard not to look at. It had swelled inside him when Crowley handed him the books, a dizziness and a sweet lightness in his head that had nothing to do with the explosion. Aziraphale knew the word for it, of course—being an angel, he was supposed to be something of an expert—but he could not bring himself to say it, could barely even begin to think it. He put his head in his hands and muttered a very different four-letter word instead.

He had been so blind. Of course it was Crowley. It could only ever have been Crowley.

His hands were shaking. He needed to calm down. He needed a nice warm cup of tea to hold onto while he sorted himself out. What he reached for instead was a wine glass.

Aziraphale appreciated a good wine as much as the next person, perhaps more, but not for the same reasons as Crowley. Wine was to be savored. It was something to complement a particularly good meal, or perhaps shared on social occasions. He did not share Crowley’s penchant for, as he put it, “getting absolutely sloshed,” but there were some conversations he could not bring himself to have while sober, even with himself.

How, _how_ had he not noticed any of this before? He was supposed to know about these things. It was part of his job. He was supposed to care about everything, including Crowley, and he had thought that was all he’d been doing. In fact, maybe that was all it was after all. He straightened a little, looking into his wine glass. That made more sense, actually. Yes, he’d been thinking of Crowley as just another part of this world, and was in fact no more attached to him than he was to, say, the bookshop. Never mind the fact that Crowley had been around for far longer, popping in and out of his life with increasing frequency for millennia. Never mind what Aziraphale had felt when Crowley had handed him the rescued books, when some deeply buried part of him had understood what it meant and he had realized all at once how very much he had wanted this. Never mind that you didn’t long for a bookshop to feel the same way about you.

He drained his glass and poured himself another. This was bad. This wasn’t some arrangement of convenience that he could back out of if things got dicey. He didn’t know how to extricate himself from this.

He blamed himself, really. He should have recognized the symptoms and stopped talking to Crowley before it was too late. But how could he have, when Crowley kept showing up, and Aziraphale really had nobody else to talk to, and Crowley was so clever and charming and comfortable to be around? Could he have saved himself, if he had recognized it sooner? Would he have wanted to?

Aziraphale forced himself to breathe slowly, even though he didn’t need to breathe at all. It was all so much, and he couldn’t decide how he felt about any of it. He knew how he _ought_ to feel, which was horrified, but couldn’t quite manage it, and honestly that horrified him more than the thing itself. What was wrong with him? Crowley was a demon, and Aziraphale wasn’t much of an angel at all if he had fallen for—the idea of falling took hold and temporarily paralyzed him. That, and so much worse, was in store for him if anyone upstairs ever found out.

He finished his third glass and drank the rest straight from the bottle. His heart raced. He needed to figure out what to do, but the alcohol hit him like a freight train and muddied his thoughts. Maybe he should write his thoughts out. It would be so much easier to navigate all this if he drew himself a map. He pulled out a sheet of paper, snatched up his favorite fountain pen, and wrote “Crowley” in the middle of the page. A good, solid start. Except he didn’t know where to go from there. With a moan, he tossed the paper aside.

The bookshop swirled around him, and the next thing he knew he was on the floor with another open bottle in his hand. His glass had rolled away somewhere on the carpet, and the bag loomed over him from the table, partially open, taunting him with the sight of whole, unharmed books instead of the ashes they should have been. If he thought about it, this was really all Crowley’s fault. None of this would have happened if he had just gone straight back to hell from the garden instead of slithering up to the wall to trade banter with an angel. Aziraphale wished it had never happened. Then, remembering how lonely the past eighty years had been, he took it back.

Why did this have to be so hard? It was supposed to be a wonderful, beautiful thing, not this tangled and confusing mess. He had seen how badly humans could muck it up, sure, but he’d always taken that to be part of the ineffability, and that was for humanity, not the likes of him and Crowley. His old friend William Shakespeare had written a play about something similar, he remembered, swallowing. It had not ended well.

The more Aziraphale drank, the more his thoughts spiraled. From time to time, everything faded to black. When the sun rose, he was in no state to open the bookshop, so he crawled under the table and kept drinking. “Fraternizing,” he muttered over and over, each time with more disgust than the last. “No wonder he disappeared. _Fraternizing._” He finally passed out sometime during the morning, but it didn’t last nearly as long as he had hoped. When he opened his eyes, his head ached, and then he knocked it against the table when he tried to stand up. It was dark outside. This needed to stop. But every time he looked at the books, it hit him all over again, and he didn’t know what to do with any of it.

He opened another bottle to dull the pain in his head, and possibly try to make himself black out again. If he had a normal human liver, he’d probably be dead by now. Well, it was a good thing he didn’t, then. He took a swig from the bottle, but his coordination was so impaired that he spilled red wine all over his white jacket in the process. Cursing, he set the bottle down and miracled the stain away. Was this how Crowley felt on his drinking sprees? It was horrible. He needed to stop. He didn’t.

He just felt so lost. This wasn’t something he had been prepared to deal with. He didn’t even know how one would go about dealing with it. He had read novels, of course. He knew what was supposed to happen next, but what would he even do if it did? The thought sent him into a panic. He wasn’t ready for any of it. Besides, they were supposed to be enemies. Heaven and hell would destroy them.  
He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t figure this out on his own. Vaguely, he wondered who he could ask for help, and the answer came to him, clear as day. He stumbled around until he found Crowley’s card, and then dialed the number into his phone. It started to ring. Crowley would know what to do. Crowley was so smart.

“It’s four in the morning,” said a familiar, slurred voice. “Who the fuck is this, and what do you want?”

The sound of his voice sent a shock through Aziraphale. He nearly dropped the phone. What was he thinking? Crowley was the last person he should tell. There was no coming back from that. Swallowing against his dry throat, he stuttered, “G-goodbye,” hung up, and backed away from the phone as far as possible.

He sank back to the floor and ran his hands through his hair. That might well be the stupidest thing he’d ever done, and he had once asked Crowley if he was still a demon. He reached for the bottle of wine and nearly chugged the rest of it in one go. Thinking better of it for once, he poured the rest out onto the carpet and then miracled it clean. The entire bookshop reeked of wine. He squeezed his eyes shut and purged the alcohol from his bloodstream. It left him with a splitting headache and a throat like sandpaper, but at least his judgement was sound now. Or, as sound as it ever could be.

Someone pounded on the door so loudly that Aziraphale jolted and hit his head on the bookshelf. “We’re closed,” he shouted hoarsely, realizing as he was talking that there was no point. It was past midnight. Whoever was here obviously wasn’t looking to buy books.

The door banged open. “Aziraphale?”

“Crowley?” His heart did a backflip. Not Crowley, not here, not now. He scrambled to his feet, put on what he hoped was a normal expression, and opened the door to the back room just as Crowley was for all appearances preparing to smash it down. “Why, what…what’s going on?”

Crowley froze. “What d’you mean, what’s…”

Aziraphale swallowed, hoping he wasn’t wincing too visibly against his headache. “Why are you here? Is something wrong?”

Crowley stared at him for a moment, then burst out, “You just—you just called me, said ‘goodbye,’ and then hung up! What the heaven was I supposed to think?”

“Well, that…that doesn’t sound like me,” murmured Aziraphale.

Crowley pushed past him without answering. “Had a few drinks, did you?” he said, seeing the empty wine bottles scattered around the room. “Christ, angel. I knew you were fond of wine, but not like this.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale’s hands wouldn’t stop fidgeting. He hid them behind his back. “You really shouldn’t have come. I didn’t even call you. Don’t know what you’re talking about. Must have been someone else.”

Crowley spotted the business card, which Aziraphale had left right next to the phone, and shot Aziraphale a doubtful look. “This place is a mess,” he said, circling the room, almost impressed. “What happened in here? What’s this?” He held up the piece of paper that just said “Crowley” on it.

Aziraphale stuttered wordlessly for a moment. He looked anywhere but at Crowley. “…Don’t know how that got there. Perhaps, er, perhaps Gabriel left his hit list lying around.”

“It’s in your handwriting.”

“Oh, is it?”

Crowley sighed and tossed the paper onto the floor. “Quite a habit you’ve picked up here. Next time you get plastered, could you do it at a reasonable hour? I may not need sleep, but I hate waking up in the middle of it.”

“I can, er, certainly try,” muttered Aziraphale.

“When did this start, anyway?” Crowley threw himself down onto one of Aziraphale’s chairs and stretched out his legs in front of him. “I didn’t think I was out for quite that long. What all did I miss?”

“W-well, er…” Aziraphale’s hands were fidgeting again. Crowley looked like he was getting ready to stay a while, and as much as Aziraphale wanted him to, it was the opposite of what he needed right now. Maybe the opposite of what he needed forever. He took a deep breath “Listen…”

_I don’t think we should meet for a while. Head office is really breathing down my neck right now. It’s too risky. Who knows when they’ll get off my back, or even if. Could be a very long time._

Crowley looked up at him, and the words died in his throat. He couldn’t do it. There was no sense putting himself through more of what the past eighty years had been. None of his distractions had worked for long, not books, not dancing, not even espionage. And he couldn’t do that to Crowley, either.

He swallowed. “Now’s not really a good time, Crowley,” he said, without looking him in the eyes.

“Oh.” In the edge of his vision, Aziraphale sensed Crowley looking at him. He drew himself up off the chair. “I am sorry, angel,” he said. “I…hope I made that clear.”

Some invisible hand had grabbed Aziraphale’s heart and was wringing it out like a sponge. _I know. Please don’t apologize. I’m just glad to see you again. _Aziraphale swallowed, managed a small smile, and forced himself to say in an even tone, “Perhaps some other day.”

“Oh.” Crowley gave a small laugh. “Right, yeah, other days. There’s loads of those.” Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he went back to his usual liquid posture and stepped towards the door. “Marvelous invention, telephones,” he said, with a glance at Aziraphale’s. “They’d be a great help in any kind of arrangement. Don’t you think?”

Aziraphale glanced up. So he did want to continue the arrangement. He hadn’t brought it up until now. “Yes, I…I thought exactly the same thing.”

Crowley’s limbs swung carelessly, but his nod was just a little too tense. “We’ll be in touch, then?”

“Of course.”

Crowley tipped his hat with half a smile and sauntered to the door. He opened it a crack, paused, and turned around. “Aziraphale, you’d…you’d tell me, if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

Aziraphale forced himself to smile through the headache and the maelstrom of everything he was feeling. “Nothing’s wrong, Crowley.”

It wasn’t an answer, and both of them knew it. Crowley drew a small breath, then let it out. “Well, night, then. Or morning. Whatever bloody time it is.”

The door shut behind him, and Aziraphale collapsed into his chair and let his face dissolve into a grimace as he rubbed his temples. That was the last time he drank that much. How Crowley could do this to himself willingly was beyond him.

His heart rate was finally slowing. It was okay, really, he told himself. Or it would be, which was almost the same thing. Nothing had actually changed. He was just aware of it now. There was no reason things couldn’t continue on the same as before.

Well, not exactly the same, he thought, glancing at Crowley’s business card on the table and allowing himself a smile. Crowley was speaking to him again. So maybe a little better.


End file.
